The Southern Research Station (SRS) is conducting an outreach for a Pathways Recent Graduate position: Research Biologist, GS-0401-12. The vacancy announcement is expected to open in late 2016. Please circulate this outreach notice to as many potential candidates as possible; we are seeking a diverse pool of qualified applicants.
Research Biologist
GS-0401-12
Duty Station: Asheville, NC
About this Position
The scientist is a Research Biologist in the Southern Research Station’s Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (SRS-4854). The mission of the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (EFETAC) is to generate knowledge and tools needed to anticipate and respond to environmental threats. The most serious threats to forests and the benefits they provide inevitably involve complex factors interacting across multiple spatial and temporal scales. The Center’s challenge is to maintain a comprehensive and integrated research program to tackle these complex issues, while delivering knowledge to forest landowners, managers, decision-makers, scientists, and other interested audiences in a timely, useful, and user-friendly manner.
The Center addresses problems related to the science of monitoring, assessment, and communication across four primary classes of environmental threats. These four classes include forest pests, weather and climate change, wildland fire, and changes in land use or land cover. Forest pests include both native and non-native invasive insects, pathogens, and plants. Weather and climate change include the more direct effects of extreme events such as hurricanes, ice storms, tornadoes, floods and droughts, and more broadly, the complex interactions of climate change and variability throughout ecosystems and landscapes. Wildland fire is a growing concern, presenting complex management tradeoffs related to people, ecosystems, communities, and landscapes. Land use/land cover change results from human-related development and urbanization, which creates intricate forest patterns within a mosaic of other landscape elements. The results of research conducted by the EFETAC provides managers with predictive capability about future threats to forest heath and resilience. This can include all values of forest ecosystems, including non-timber forest products such as consumable botanicals (ramps, cohosh, sochan, and others). The health and resiliency of these forested ecosystems may be threatened and affected by a number of factors (climate change, development, economic values and harvesting pressures, woodland development, and more. Research performed by scientists in this unit addresses management needs by applying experimental, observational, remote sensing and modeling approaches, as well as developing syntheses of existing knowledge. The unit also focuses on getting the insights and tools provided and created by EFETAC into the hands of stakeholders. This tool adoption requires effective interactions with a variety of stakeholders, including tribal governments and forest managers. As such, effective communications and collaborations with such stakeholders is an essential part of the unit’s mission. This position is responsible for planning, organizing, and conducting research and technology transfer primarily under two of the problem areas.
USDA is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer
The purpose of this outreach is to network this employment opportunity widely and to ensure that a broad range of highly qualified candidates are aware of and encouraged to apply. USDA prohibits discrimination in its programs on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and martial or familial status.
The Forest Service provides reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, please notify Andrew Quillen, (404) 347-2424 or aquillen@fs.fed.us. For more information on this opportunity, please contact: Kier Klepzig, at (828) 257-4307 or kklepzig@fs.fed.us.
About the Community
Asheville is located among the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains. It is the largest city in western North Carolina. The University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA) is the only dedicated liberal arts institution in the University of North Carolina system, a nationally respected research institution known for a tradition of academic excellence. The city hosts a minor league baseball team, the Asheville Tourists. Outdoor activities abound, with an excellent bike trail system, golf courses, and hiking.